Ganesha, the God of Knowledge

In Hinduism, especially in Balinese Hinduism, the Lord Ganesha is one of the popular gods. Lately, we see the worship to the elephant-headed gods is starting to develop. Ganesha statue is almost installed in many places, not only in temple but also widely in private homes. What does it mean? Balinese Hindu community considers Lord Ganesha as the gods of virtue, so that the virtue is expected to inspire everyone to be on the right track in living their life.

Since many years ago, the findings of Ganesha statues from all over Indonesia were very numerous. Some are equipped with simple jewelry, while others look magnificent. Such findings definitely were tailored to the skills of the artist or the economic conditions of the surrounding communities.Ganesh or Ganesha is the elephant-headed god. Among the Hindus, he is considered demihuman and demigod. The role of Lord Ganesha is so important because he is the son of Lord Shiva.

Hindu society believes that Lord Ganesha is the god of knowledge. Therefore, in many places, including in Indonesia, until now the Hindu community builds a temple equipped with the installation of Ganesha statute. Hopefully, the children born will be smart and dutiful to parents.

As the god of knowledge, Ganesha always invites the admiration of iconographic experts (knowledge of the art of ancient statues) because of the shape and style of the art are different. However, in principle the feature of Ganesha statue remains the same, namely having a trunk sucking the contents of bowl in his hand grip.

According to Hindu mythology, the bowl contains fluid of inexhaustible knowledge despite constantly being sucked by him. Then, it is identified with an inexhaustible knowledge despite being explored and worked on all the times. Perhaps, such a condition is expected by human.

Due to high popularity of Ganesha, he is also worshiped as the god of remover of the obstacles, both supernatural (magic) and physical obstacles. Ganesha is worshiped because he has a best friend, namely little mouse. The mouse is then made his vehicle. Therefore, in the iconography Ganesha always mounts a mouse (musaka). Musaka symbolizes the self-conceit. On that account, Ganesha is expected to act as controller against the one’s arrogance.

People often interpret that mouse has the characteristic in accordance with that of Ganesha. Mouse can get past all the obstacles in any location such as at homes, rice fields and ditches. Similarly, the characteristic expected from Ganesha is that people have great power like an elephant to break all the trees in the forest strongly while trees are analogized to big problems faced by humans. (BTN/various sources)